A streaming startup founded by former executives at Disney DIS +0.3% and Discovery wants to give you what cable, satellite and even most current streaming-TV services won’t: à la carte TV.

Los Angeles-based Struum announced itself Thursday in a press release, with further details in a story by the Wall Street Journal’s Lillian Rizzo. When it launches early this spring, it will offer viewers an unusual deal: Pay us upfront to watch what you want across other services without having to sign up for any of them.

No, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to snack from the likes of Apple AAPL -1.9% TV+ or Disney+. Instead, Struum—pronounced “stroom”—will connect viewers with less-mainstream streaming from smaller services that you may not have heard of. Think of it as hipster à la carte.

Struum’s press release cites “more than 250 mass niche and specialty” subscription video-on-demand services and says the firm has inked deals with almost three dozen of them that will provide access to 20,000-plus TV series, movies and movie shorts.

Struum publicists declined to identify those services, although the release said the fare from those already on board covers “feature films, live action TV series, lifestyle and reality shows, programs serving underserved audiences such as the LGBTQ and Latinx communities, and foreign language shows and series.”

Struum hasn’t announced price plans either, but the WSJ story has founders Lauren DeVillier and Paul Paster (both formerly with Discovery) and Eugene Liew and Thomas Wadsworth (each ex-Disney) suggesting one likely option would be $9.99 a month for 100 viewing credits, enough for about a program a day.

The math suggests a feature-length flick will cost more credits than a TV episode, which itself would require more than a short. Or new releases might cost more than back-catalog items.

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner thinks this can work, having backed Struum through his investment firm Tornante Co.

The problems with pay-TV bundles, whether they come from a cable operator or a digital service like Hulu or YouTube TV, are obvious enough. Rates keep going up as each channel asks for a little more, TV providers sometimes can’t get rid of the most expensive channels, and in the bargain viewers sometimes wind up paying for content they hate (for example, the toxic and truth-starved One America News, carried by AT&T T -0.7% and Verizon VZ -0.7%).

But even as viewers increasingly content themselves by making their own bundle across multiple streaming services, will viewers see the appeal of putting their money in a Struum wallet and then finding stuff to spend that balance on?

“I think people will be willing to pay and try out Struum, but they will only stick around if the available content is compelling,” emailed Tammy Parker, a senior analyst with GlobalData. “Whenever I hear ‘aspirational’ brands, as Struum is describing its partners, I take that to mean brands which so far have been unable to gain significant traction.”

Brett Sappington, a vice president at the market-research firm Interpret, shared that concern over email.

“Typically, small services are small for a reason – either because of libraries of less popular content or limitations in marketing their service,” he said. “Struum could be a good option for the latter but won’t be able to do much for the former.”

Sappington noted one risk: Existing rights agreements may limit Struum’s partners from selling content they didn’t create.

Jason Cohen, co-founder of the streaming-service finder MyBundle.TV, noted that his site can only find a single streaming-TV service that covers all of a viewer’s desired channels 38.8% of the time.

“Every TV watcher has unique interests, and these niche services are fantastic, the problem is how do streamers and streaming services ‘match’,” he wrote in an email.

Saying he sees “viability” in Struum’s concept, he added that MyBundle.TV is readying its own subscription-manager tool to help viewers find and sign up for these niche services.

If viewer fatigue with rising TV costs intersects with a willingness to watch Something Else in place of the most expensive content, Struum might have a shot.

“There is likely a market for edgy, not-ready-for-primetime content that is considered too risqué/intense/extreme for more mainstream channels,” Parker said. “But there also might be markets for channels that duplicate themes that are already widely accessible but simply add more content variety to what is available.”